The Republicans Are Doing All The Voter Registration Now
It hasn’t been a week since the GOP-dominated Supreme Court decided presidents are above the law and the NY Times decided to run a column by right-wing kook Matthew Walther advocating for not voting, comparing it to “not drinking, not eating carbohydrates, not having sex, not watering one’s lawn.” Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a scholar of fascist movements was mortified by his sheer stupidity: “This,” she wrote, “is just very sad and frankly just what the Autocracy Doctor ordered. Not voting is a vote to let others decide your fate, and we know that many elections are decided by relatively few votes. The goal of many autocracies is ‘demobilization’: people detaching from politics so they don't resist.”
A couple of days ago, David Wildstein reported that Republicans in New Jersey continue to outpace Democrats in voter registration, whittling down what was a one-million voter edge four years ago to a still-significant 929,827. The GOP added 25,977 new voters since the June 4 primary election, 45,144 since January 1, and 49,270 since the last general election, according to statistics released today by the New Jersey Division of Elections. While Democrats picked up 22,817 since last month’s primary, they are on a different trajectory: the number of registered Democrats in New Jersey has gone up by 20,356 since the beginning of the year— less than half of the Republican gains— and are up 16,992 since the November 2023 election. That means the GOP has outpaced Democratic registration by nearly 3-1 margin since last fall. In total, New Jersey added 13,405 new voters since primary day, 64,971 since January 1, and 81,152 since November 2023. In the hotly contested 7th congressional district, the Republican registration edge has increased by 11.4%, from 16,805 on Election Day 2022 to 18,718 as of the 2024 primary. The state’s electorate is now 38.3% Democratic, 24.2% Republican, and 36.3% unaffiliated, sometimes called independents.”
NJ-07 has the most important House race in the state, pitting progressive Democrat Sue Altman against reactionary MAGA Republican Tom Kean Jr. As of this month there are 211,670 Republicans and 192,952 Democrats and 214,089 unaffiliated voters, one of the largest numbers of unaffiliated voters in the New Jersey congressional districts.
In Florida, Republicans have out-worked the Democratic Party in registering voters. Gone are the days when Obama registered in the neighborhood of 800,000 voters (mostly Democrats) and wound up winning the state by 236,550 votes (50.91% to 48.10%). In 2009, Florida had 4,637,354 Democrats on their rolls and 3,967,474 Republicans. Today, the barely breathing Florida Democratic Party has largely given up on registering voters, the most important function that should be performing. The state is no long even considered a swing state and Democrats are reduced to fighting defensive battles in their traditional strongholds.
A lot of “Florida Democratic money” is being directed to other states, particularly Michigan and Pennsylvania. I have it on good authority that big donors in the state have been actively discouraged from spending locally. A friend who works for the Florida Democratic Party told me that “given the fact that we have a contested pimary and general election, we now have to devote our efforts to ‘persuasion,’ not turnout.”
The party probably will be able to register something fewer than 10,000 voters in Miami between now and the cutoff. Many of them will not necessarily vote for the Democratic candidates, or against the abortion ban. State Rep. Eskamani in Orlando, through an organization called “People Power Florida,” has registered roughly 500 voters in Orlando; that’s it. DeSantis’ administration has issued stiff fines to many voter registration groups, and the others have just stopped.
Take Osceola County in the Orlando metro for example. There are now 218,758 registered voters— 80,736 Democrats, 73,962 unaffiliated voters and 58,399 Republicans. Alan Grayson, who represented the county as a congressman, is running for an open state Senate seat there now. He wishes the state and national Democrats paid closer attention to registering voters. Yesterday, he told me that “President Obama registered 800,000+ Democrats in Florida, and he won. President Clinton registered 550,000 Democrats in Florida, and he won. Stacey Abrams registered 2.6 million voters in Georgia, and Democrats won a presidential campaign and two Senate campaigns there. That’s how Democrats win. What has happened in Florida since COVID is the exact opposite. Democratic registration is down by 1,000,000+. These aren’t voters who have switched; these are voters who aren’t registered now. Florida now has the lowest voter registration in the entire country. And to make things worse, in some areas, vote-by-mail among registered voters is down by 2/3. When voters aren’t registered, it doesn’t matter who, or what, is on the ballot. Roughly four million Democrats in Florida are sidelined. This is not a case of ‘the players tried to take the field, the marching band refused to yield.’ This is a case of most players not even dressed for the game.”
Ben Braver is running for the state Senate in a red district transitioning to purple north and west of Tampa that takes in parts of Hillsborough and Pasco counties. It includes Brandon, Land O Lakes, Zephyrhills, Dade City, Lacooche and Plant City. There are 137,052 registered Republicans, 111,973 registered Republicans and 105,432 unaffiliated voters. His freshman Republican opponent is Danny Burgess, an extreme MAGA in a moderate district. His record in the Senate is pretty racist and fully odious, having introduced a bill as soon as he was elected to protect Confederate monuments. His other notable legislation was to allow the state to overrule local governments' decisions to reduce funding for police and waive sovereign immunity for municipalities, thereby allowing local authorities to be sued for providing inadequate law enforcement. He’s probably best known for legislation to block people injured while participating in protests from receiving any damages, something the ACLU described as an attempt “to silence and criminalize Black protesters and their allies who are exercising their First Amendment rights.”
Braver is campaigning on the kind of bread and butter issues (education, affordable housing, healthcare, insurance) that Burgess has ignored rather than on the culture war issues he uses to get voters’ minds off the real issues that impact their lives.
“The unbearable Florida sun dissuades would-be canvassers from getting into action,” he noted yesterday. “But the sun isn't the only heat we face. Radical changes to our laws increased the fines for mishandling registration forms ten fold, meaning 3rd party organizations registering the often ignored voters in marginalized communities can be put out of business for one small mistake. Republicans took a lead and made sure that ground can never be taken back, toying with election laws like it's a game, not people's lives.”
Thomas Witkop is the progressive Democrat battling it out with MAGAt ass-kisser and AIPAC genocidal maniac Brian Mastin Florida’s 21st congressional district north of Mar-a-Lago. The district is purple in nature with 221,187 registered Republicans, 181,779 Democrats and 152,880 unaffiliated voters (as of 2022). The part of the district contained in St Lucie County is safely blue and the parts in Palm Beach and Martin counties… need some work. Witkop told us that “It certainly doesn’t help that 90% of Florida voter purges since 2023, which have kicked over 1 million voters off voter rolls, have targeted Democrats and NPAs. This questionable GOP tactic purported to combat voter fraud boils down to voter suppression, de-mobilization.”
Let's hope Braver and Grayson are both Florida state senators next year and that Witkop replaces Mast in Congress. Please consider helping the three of them of them here.